Sunday, Aug 21, 2005 at 19:00
Last year I towed an offroad trailer north to south travelling with 5 other vehicles that did not have trailers. The trailer weighed about 700 kg empty and full I estimate about 1.2 tonnes. We did Rudall
Park also.
I had a 4.2 patrol diesel and had trouble on some of the dunes on the north half. Simply ran out of power and had to reverse back down some dunes and on one dune I simply could not get over so I winched. But having said that some of the other trailerless vehicles did their share of reversing and some had their share of difficult dunes (oddly) which were not necessarily the ones we found hard. But I found it easier to get over some of the dunes than the people who were not in our group and who were not letting their tyres down. ALso we visited all teh wells so took that route and that is where we had the hardest dunes. BUT it is NOT the dunes that is the problem, its teh corrugations.
The biggest problem on the CSR is the corrugations and that is where trailers come undone. We came across trailers that had broken off stub axles. And the corrugations are on the transport sections where
cross roads intersect the CSR. Kunawarrajiti and
Georgia Bore basically. They will shake and test your
suspension, wear out your shocks and break off you trailer stub axles if there is any weakness. A few vehicles in our group had shock failure on the first day of corrugations with brand new ARB shocks. Every vehicle in our group had some sort of corrugation/vibration related mechanical problem. Did not matter how slow or fast you went, their was no escaping.
The tyre pressure will depend on your brand of tyres. All the vehicles in our group of 6 ran different pressures depending on the brand and load. I dont think there is any universal pressure to run. The Goodyear MT were the stiffest and had to be let down alot more than the BFG for example to get the same footprint. I ran Dueller light trucks at about 20 psi hot
I was lucky because I did not have a clue about the route, but our group leader had done the trip before and this took alot of the anticipation/anxiety/guessing out of the trip which took us about 20 days.
Make sure you go and dont let others deter, take spare stubs, lower the tire pressures till any lower does not make the ride any better, and take your time is the best advise I can give.
I am no expert on the CSR, but would not hesitate to take a trailer provided I was confident that the stubs were not on their way to fatigue failure. And to put it into perspective there was two suzuki swift front wheel drive cars at Rudall that had done the bottom half and got up all the dunes on 8 psi.
We had a great trip and were lucky enough to travel with a great group of people.
Sean
AnswerID:
126194